“Community isn’t limited to where you live. Community is the relationships you build.”

Susan will be the first to tell you that she has always had a passion for challenging social constructs, long before she had the language to define it. Experience in boots-on-the-ground activism as part of a street medic team providing direct mutual aid, fostered the development of relationships joining together to disrupt and dismantle systems of oppression.

Susan has an extensive history working in the field of intimate partner and sexual violence. Her work includes management of a shelter for victims while also providing direct client services and advocacy within civil and criminal justice systems, educational, legal, legislative, medical and mental health, social services, religious and community systems. She facilitated survivors groups, developed volunteer and staff training materials, provided community education, and procured community fundraising to support services. She has served as co-facilitator in a regional partner violence offender education program. In addition, she has extensive experience providing administrative support for a national sports medicine certification board and also within the legal and medical arenas. 

She was instrumental in obtaining funds in rural Iowa for two new positions of a domestic violence prosecutor and a victim witness coordinator in order to increase prosecution efforts.

When people come together in relationship; community is created. Her belief is that all positive change happens through these relationships and that through community, everything is possible.